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So the President isn't the only one to make a mess in Crawford.
Hundreds of Crawford residents were evacuated Tuesday evening when a train derailed downtown and spilled a corrosive chemical.
A Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway train was traveling south toward Crawford about 6:20 p.m. when it jumped the tracks in the downtown area and 23 cars derailed, said Bob Sutter, Crawford’s emergency management coordinator.
One chemical, the corrosive liquid ethanolamine, spilled from the cars, said Patrick Brady, an employee with Burlington Northern Santa Fe’s hazardous materials team.
The chemical is “not really an airborne agent,†said Crawford Assistant Fire Chief John Brooks, but it can irritate and burn if it’s on the skin.
If someone was standing close to the chemical, it could cause health problems, Brooks said, but he said he believed nobody could have gotten close enough for that to happen.
Brooks said hazardous materials teams took several air-quality readings at the scene and told crews that the air quality was acceptable. He said the air quality in Crawford was never compromised.
Still, city officials evacuated about 300 residents within a half-mile of the crash. By 10 p.m., Sutter said that the air quality was fine and that people were able to return home.
Electricity remained out in part of the town later Tuesday night after one of the train cars hit a light pole. School would resume as normal today, Sutter said.
The chemical continued to leak at 10 p.m., but employees had built a dike to contain the leak. The rail cars were expected to be removed from the tracks by noon today, although officials said they expected that the portion of State Highway 317 which crossed the tracks would be closed for several days.
Brady said the railroad would bring in an independent air monitoring team to check cleanup efforts.
Charlie and Murlin Bottlinger own several large grain storage bins adjacent to where the train derailed. They said railroad officials informed them that it would take about 24 hours to clear the tracks.
Charlie Bottlinger said one of his tractor-trailers that was loading up with grain at the time of the derailment was struck by a train car, causing major damage. Luckily, the driver was not in the truck at the time, he said. Some grain did spill, he said, but at a distance from the chemicals, so there was no cross-contamination.
Joe McCulloch, who lives two blocks from the downtown railroad tracks, said he was on his way home when police vehicles blocking the surrounding area informed him of the derailment.
“I called my wife to see if she was OK, and she said she was fine but that she had heard a big explosion,†he said.
<center>Crawford is messed up.</center>
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